Tag: Diet

My book-in-progress, formerly The New England Diet, is now titled The Retro Diet™. While Wayne and I live on a traditional New England diet, the principles and practices also draw from national sources. My first vintage diet book, American Women Didn’t Get Fat in the 1950s, was an in-depth look at the marketing of obesity to American women, the complicity of the medical profession and softening of metrics used to determine healthy weight. The Retro Diet is going to be a “how to” for both men and women with clear guidelines and meal planning suggestions. It’s not just a book about eating, but about living! Eating retro is a lifestyle filled with gratitude, simplicity and accountability.

But there will be something big missing from the book. Also, who am I, anyway, to write such a book?!

I’m naughty, according to many “experts”. I eat a lot of potatoes! Potatoes have an unscientific and undeserved bad reputation among many who recoil at consuming carbohydrates. When I wrote my first vintage diet book I received some feedback from people stating that the wholesome foods I mentioned in the book, like potatoes, make people fat! They will give you diabetes! (Fact: theAmerican Diabetes Associationstates you CAN have potatoes even when you have diabetes!)

The humble potato, instead of being branded as bad for you or any weight loss program, should have rock star food status. It’s subversive yet secretly healthy! Potatoes in raw form are inexpensive, simple to prepare, delicious and readily available at most grocery stores. They are also a Maine diet staple. Let’s take a look at the numbers:

When I first started “eating retro” and lost weight over ten years ago I was leaving behind the tyranny of an insatiable appetite which seemingly stemmed from two issues: my relationship to food and eating junk. Underlying the usual analysis of overeating and weight loss was that I was feeling sorry for myself. Why? Because I couldn’t eat as much as I wanted when I wanted without consequences. I was also attached to the illusion that a lifestyle of eating too much, especially sugar and refined carbs was somehow good for my soul. I mistook edible artifice for nourishment. I was always “hungry” but was feeding the wrong appetite. I was focused on eating all the things instead of seeing all the gifts from a healthy relationship to and with food. Why would I, right? Shouldn’t I be entitled to unlimited access to what was mine? Did God put food on my table? No! I worked hard to put that food on the table, and why even talk about God when all I wanted was an Oreo Blizzard from Dairy Queen.

The photo of me above on the left is from 2009, before I lost 10% of my body weight in 2010 by following a 1950s diet that I documented in my bookAmerican Women Didn’t Get Fat in the 1950s. The photo on the right was me at my wedding in 2018.Since 2013 I’ve been reading diet books, articles and cook books from the 19th century through World War II, many of which are New England sources. I’ve maintained my weight loss and continue to have very healthy cholesterol levels by eating a traditional early New England diet balanced with retro American guidelines. And so, I have an announcement!

Averyl asked me if I was willing to share what my daily diet used to look like and how it is today along with my “before” pic on her blog. I cut alcohol out of my diet when I got sober almost six years ago. I admit that I’m shy when it comes to talking about myself like this but she pointed out that it can help inspire others.

Simple Living New England Est. April 2017

I'm Averyl. I grew up in NYC and moved from Manhattan to New England for college and grad school in 1985, then decided to stay! My husband Wayne and I (married September 2018) live in a mid-century cottage at the edge of our woods that's minutes from Portland, Maine and the sea. I enjoy blogging about nature, vintage treasures, spirituality, old-fashioned cooking, Yankee thrift and homemaking.Search for: